


potential energy

by trell (qunlat)



Category: One Piece
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Jossed, Punk Hazard Arc, Spoilers - Dressrosa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 23:14:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2043870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qunlat/pseuds/trell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“If you value life,” says Tony Tony Chopper with conviction, “then you’re the kind of person that should be a doctor. That’s the most important part.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	potential energy

They’re walking back from the ice caves when the raccoon dog asks him why he became a doctor, all curiosity and no guile.

As a question it should be simple, only a few words needed in answer. Easy to lie, to say _to help people, why else._

But instead Law hides his face against the high collar of his coat and says, “I think you wouldn’t like the answer to that,” because it’s strangely hard to lie to this not-quite human doctor clinging to his shoulder. Tony Tony Chopper radiates innocence, shines like a beacon of all that’s right with the world and all the things that Law isn’t and doesn’t believe in and has not, in all truth, ever been. 

The little doctor would hate to hear that Law began his career killing frogs with lemon juice and stretching them open on a board, cutting into their insides to figure out the valves of their hearts and the positions of their organs. He'd been nine, dead-eyed and morbid, and he’d found dozens of them in the garden outside the room that he’d been kept in; and he’d opened all of them, up until the garden got too dry and they stopped hiding under the ferns, until he knew the purpose of every sticky gleaming-wet gland.

Later he'd moved on to stoning birds in the courtyard and taking out their bones, seeing if he could reassemble the connections after he’d cleaned them and thrown out the flesh and see what each one accomplished; and only after all this had he gotten his hands on anatomy books, and asked Joker whether one day he could take apart a _human_ , and Joker had laughed and ruffled Law's hair with satisfaction—

Trudging through the snow with Tony Tony Chopper on his shoulder Law shudders—hard enough that he’s sure the little doctor feels it—and wrenches his attention back to the present to listen to what's being said. “It’s important!” Tony is insisting, “doctors that become doctors for the wrong reasons don’t treat people right.”

“I think,” Law says, the snow up to his calves and seeping into his boots despite his long coat and jeans, “it’s more important why someone stays a doctor than why they became one.” 

After all, he’s met plenty of physicians that started out with good intentions and ended up something like how he began; more interested in how they could twist nature rather than repair its breaks, too eager for their patients not to make it.

(The first time Law had picked up a scalpel had been the day Joker had said, _if you want to know how to destroy something you have to know how it works,_ and Law had followed this to its logical conclusion: he’d learn how everything worked, from basic inanimate objects right up to humans themselves, and then he’d know how to tear them up from the inside.

He still knows how to do that, of course, and it’s a lot less messy now that Room’s at his disposal.)

“I guess,” says Tony, and Law can feel him press his furry nose into the fleece of Law’s coat with concern. And then, inevitably: “So why’d you stay one, then?”

As a memory it’s sickening and bitter, so it’s incongruous that this of all things is what makes Law hide a smile. “That’s a longer story,” he mitigates. “The part that mattered was that someone made it clear to me that keeping people alive is far more challenging and likely to make an impact, in the grand scheme of things, than getting rid of them.”

“Oh.” Law can practically hear the gears turning in the raccoon dog’s head. What conclusions he draws from Law's words Law can't begin to guess.

He doubts they have anything to do with reality. It’s almost funny, really, that Law can still close his eyes and see Corazon’s bloody form collapsed against the wall—gasping damply, fingers closed around the lapel of Law’s shirt—yet can’t recall what Corazon’s voice sounded like when he said the words that had made the difference. 

If it had been the words that had done so, rather than the blood.

On his shoulder, the little doctor says, “I guess you’re not a bad person, then, even if you are a warlord.”

 _That’s an over-generous assumption._ Smoker’s heart is beating in one of his pockets; Monet’s thumps in the other. Two dozen more that he’s extracted beat on somewhere in the depths of Impel Down, a corrupt government's leash on two dozen pirate crews.

Aloud, he says, “That so.”

“If you value life,” says Tony Tony Chopper with conviction, “then you’re the kind of person that should be a doctor. That’s the most important part.”

Law doesn’t think he believes that, either, not when the harsh reality of the world is that intentions matter far less than outcomes. Law spends far more time cutting people to pieces to get them out of his way than to find what’s wrong inside them, but the little doctor isn’t wrong; Law knows well that a person’s life has far more potential for far-reaching consequences than their death, even in the case of a martyr. Energy in the form of action, rather than in echoes.

“Thanks,” he says, voice carefully bland, and presses on towards Caesar’s labs.


End file.
